San Diego County’s four detention facilities can hold 855 young people. But on a recent Wednesday, just 311 youths were housed inside the county’s prisons and camps, said Chief Probation Officer Adolfo Gonzales. At least five to six wings of the county’s juvenile detention space are totally empty at present, he said. Just eight years ago, the number of incarcerated kids was three times as high: The average daily population in lockup stood at 1,008 for January 2010.

Gonzales told me about a recent example that highlights how the system has changed. A San Diego cop brought a 9-year-old boy to the Kearney Mesa juvenile hall for throwing a rock that almost hit a young girl. The girl’s parents had pressed for charges and, in the past, when a child like that was brought to juvenile hall, he’d end up in a jail cell. But now, if a case warrants it, on-call judges and probation officials will divert the child before he gets through the door. In this case, the boy ended up in a “cool bed” – a system started in 2011 that puts a child with a foster family or relative for a few days while a case manager can try to connect the kid with services instead of plugging him or her into the system.

When you put a kid like that – who is really only guilty of being a kid – into juvenile jail, he or she is far more likely to come back, Gonzales said. Gonzales himself – who spent decades working in a police force and is the former police chief of National City – is indicative of how mindsets have shifted over time. But he still receives the occasional pushback from police. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re so liberal. You’re setting them free,’” he said. “’I’m doing it different,’ I say. ‘The old way doesn’t work.’”

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